Abolition in United Kingdom

Controversy and abolition: UK Legal History

The Homicide Act 1957

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were several high profile murder cases, including those of Bentley and Craig, Evans and Christie, and Ruth Ellis. The imposition of the death penalty in these cases was extremely controversial and caused the public to question capital punishment. In 1956, a motion to retain the death sentence but change the law on murder was defeated in the House of Lords, as was a Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill introduced by Sydney Silverman. The government then introduced a further bill, which retained the death sentence but introduced degrees of murder with different sentences. This was the basis of the Homicide Act of 1957.

Abolition in 1965

After Wilson’s victory in 1964 and the report of the Longford Committee, the government revisited the question of abolition, and a Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Bill was finally enacted in 1965.

ABOLITIONIST

A term applied specially to the social reformers headed by Thomas Clarkson who advocated and carried the abolition of the slave-trade in the British dominions ; and applied generally to all who have aimed at abolishing either the trade in slaves or the institution of SLAVERY, whether in the British dominion or elsewhere.

The causes which contributed to abolition in the first sense are arranged by Clarkson (q.v.), the historian of the movement, in four divisions, quaintly illustrated by four confluent streams (History of the Abolition of 1808, p. 259). The four classes of abolitionists may be summarily described as

(1) miscellaneous, mostly literary (Pope, Thomson, etc.) ; (2) Quakers in England ; (3) Quakers in America ; (4) Clarkson himself, with his fellow-workers.

In 1787 the first committee for the abolition of this trade was formed by Clarkson and his associates. At first their efforts were devoted to the abolition only of the trade in slaves, as the abolition of slavery itself seemed hopeless. In 1789 Wilberforce introduced a measure into parliament, founded upon Clarkson’s materials, but it was not till 1807 that the bill for the abolition of the slave-trade passed the House of Commons, and not till 1833 that British colonial slavery was abolished by act of parliament. The abolition of slavery in the British dominions gave prominence to two points of economic interest—the inefficiency of slave labour, and the right to compensation in case of expropriation, even when the kind of property has received the most severe public moral condemnation.

The movement towards liberty, initiated by England, has been continued by most of the continental nations at varying rates down to the present time. Denmark, indeed, has the honour of anticipating the action of England. In 1792 it was ordered that slave-trade should cease in Danish dominions after 1802. In the United States the movement in favour of abolition is coeval with the union. Before the end of last century, or early in the beginning of the present one, slavery was abolished in many of the original states. The admission of new states has more than once raised the question, within what limits should slavery be tolerated ? Thus, on the admission of Missouri, the boundaries within which slavery was permitted or prohibited were carefully defined by the ” Missouri compromise” (1820). That arrangement was at a later period (in the case of Dred Scott, 1856-57) interpreted unfavourably to the cause of abolition. The indignation of abolitionists was roused by the cruel administration of the fugitive slave law and other iniquities. Slavery was a cause, and abolition a result, of the Civil War 1861-65. [1]

Resources

Notes

1. Robert Harry Inglis, Sir, Dictionary of Political Economy

See Also

Further Reading